Day 12: Crop Tool in Photoshop

When it comes to making your viewers focus on a definite part of a photo then apart from making other parts blur or darken it, the most common method is to crop the image. Definitely cropping is one of the most used methods to define your center of attraction in your photo. A bad crop or no crop can ruin your photo while a good crop gives more perfection to your photo. Thank god, we have a tool called as Crop Tool in Photoshop to crop images.

Crop Tool in Photoshop

To select crop tool all you need is to press Shift+C again and again until it comes. You can also select it from the tool panel (left one).

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After selecting crop tool you can able to see 8 handles at the edges of the image. 4 at the corners and other 4 at the sides. These handles are new in Photoshop CC and saves us lot of time to crop images. Just drag the handle and press enter/return and your cropping will be done.

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To crop a photo just drag the handle as per your requirement and your photo will be cropped. If you think that you have made a mistake then press Ctrl+Z/Cmd+Z to undo the last action. The black portion that you are seeing is called shield. It denotes the area that are going to be cropped.

You can do much more with crop tool in Photoshop CC. First let me introduce you the option bar of “crop tool”

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CONSTRAINED VS. UNCONSTRAINED CROPPING

Constrained cropping lets you to crop your photo only in a definite aspect ratio. Means the ratio of your image height and your image width will always be constant. Let me show you an example.

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Suppose I put a constrained of 1 x 1 (square) means that the ratio between my image height and my image width will always be equal to one. This means that my width will always be equal to my height. Then Photoshop will adjust the crop handle in such a way that my image height will always be equal to my image height.

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In the above example you can see that the width is equal to the height. I showed you an example of 1 x 1 constrained crop. Just like this we have many other cropping presets available in Photoshop like 4 x 5, 8.5 x 11 etc. If you cannot see the preset you want then you can click on “size and resolution” for custom constrained cropping. Just fill the width, height, and resolution you want and then click on OK. You can also save that as your preset after checking “save as crop preset”.

The main use of constrained crop comes while printing an image. Suppose you want to print one of your photo for 5 x 7 frame. Then you can use 5 x 7 constrained crop to crop your photo such that the aspect ratio of the cropped photo will be of 5 x 7.

Just opposite of constrained crop is unconstrained crop. By choosing this option, you have full flexibility over your crop tool. Unlike constrained crop, you can crop your photo with any dimension you want.

STRAIGHTEN

This is used to straighten your photo. If you have an image and you want to tilt the image then you can use this tool. You just need to drag the mouse as per your requirement and Photoshop will tilt your image.

VIEW

This helps us to crop our image. Generally I use “rules of third” which displays 2 horizontal lines with 2 vertical lines while cropping.

ADDITIONAL CROP ACTION

Use Classic Mode: If you have used Photoshop CS5 or older version in past and you think that cropping in Photoshop CS6 is somewhat difficult then you can revert back to old cropping method by turning this option on.

Auto Center Preview: By turning this option on, Photoshop will automatically put the unshielded are at the center of the window.

Show Cropped Area: By turning this feature off, Photoshop will not show the area that is going to be cropped.

Enable Crop Shield: By turning this feature on, Photoshop will darken the area (shield) that is going to be cropped.

Color: It determines the color of the shield.

Opacity: It determines the opacity of the shield.

DELETE CROPPED PIXELS

In Photoshop CS5 and older versions when you crop a photo, the area you have cropped out will be gone permanently. But in Photoshop CS6 and newer versions, you can restore the area that you have cropped out in past. I totally recommend to turn off “delete cropped pixels” while cropping an image because no one knows what will happen in future and in case you need your cropped pixels then you can have that easily. All you need to do is to expand the crop handle.

And we are done here.

Thank you for reading this article. Hopefully, we’ll meet again.

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Day 11: What is Magic Wand Tool in Photoshop

When it comes to selection in Photoshop, we’ve lots of tools available. Each tool is unique in its own way. The same goes for Magic Wand Tool in Photoshop. Although it is bit similar to Quick Selection Tool, but its ability to draw a selection with one single click gives it a slight edge over Quick Selection Tool.

In this tutorial, we’re going to learn what is Magic Wand Tool in Photoshop, when to use it, and how to use it.

What is Magic Wand Tool in Photoshop

If you’re following this article from the beginning, you must know by now that Magic Wand Tool is a selection tool in Photoshop. Being extremely agile in nature, if you want a quick turnaround, you could use this. But speed comes at a cost, and that is quality. You may not get superior quality of selection that you make with Magic Wand Tool. But for day to day use, this tool is all you need.

You could activate this tool by pressing Shift+W again and again until it comes or by grabbing it from the toolbar.

 

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Fig. 1

When to Use Magic Wand Tool in Photoshop

Adobe made Magic Wand Tool for specific tasks. Generally Magic Wand Tools works best when your selection needs same type of color.

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Fig. 2

Fig. 2 is ideal for Magic Wand Tool if you want to select the yellow umbrella. The reason is that Magic Wand Tool selects a particular color out of the whole image. It uses Photoshop’s advanced edge detection technique to find edges. Bit confused, everything will get clear in next section.

How to Use Magic Wand Tool in Photoshop

Selection with the help of Magic Wand Tool is probably the easiest thing anyone can do in Photoshop. It is as simple as one single click. All you need to do is to activate the Magic Wand Tool and click on the area you want to select.

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Fig. 3

Now suppose you want to select the yellow umbrella in Fig. 3, you just need to click on the umbrella, and that’s it. If the selection doesn’t cover the whole subject as shown in Fig. 3, just click one more time on the area which is not selected. This will give you complete selection like Fig. 4.

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Fig. 4

Now you might be wondering “How does it work?”. Well the answer is simple. As I mentioned in the beginning, Magic Wand Tool uses advanced edge detection of Photoshop. It just looks for change in color. Whenever Photoshop finds one, it knows that there’s an edge present out there. With reference to Fig. 4, there’s a huge contrast between the yellow color and the black color. Such huge contrast can only be present because of presence of an edge.

Now let’s get into a bit deeper.

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Fig. 5

The Tool Panel of Magic Wand Tool is pretty much similar to the Quick Selection Tool’s but there’s a slight difference. That’s “Tolerance’.

  1. This option lets you do three things with your selection. You have already seen it in action in Marquee Tool and Lasso Tool. It is subdivided into three sections.
    1. New Selection: This option lets you create a new selection every time your releases your mouse button. It’s like one shot. Whenever you’ve selected an area and you release the mouse button, and then you again hold down the mouse button, it’ll automatically deselect the older selections and lets you create a new one.
    2. Add to Selection: This option lets you store sessions. If you lift your mouse up and again holds down, your previous selection doesn’t vanish. Your new selection will be added to your old selection.
    3. Delete from Selection: It works same as above except that it deletes rather than adds.
  2. Sample Size: This lets you select the size of the sample. 5 by 5 average means that Photoshop will consider a square of 5 by 5 pixels and then takes average of 25 pixels to determine the color that it should consider for matching.
  3. Tolerance: The more it is, the more lenient Photoshop edge detection will be. In other words, if the value is 1, Photoshop will very tightly select the adjacent pixels. It keeps on becoming lenient as value goes higher.
  4. Anti-alias: If this feature is turned on, Photoshop smoothen out the color transition between the pixels around the edges of your selection and the pixels in the background.
  5. Contiguous: When you drag the “Magic Wand” to an area of color in a Photoshop image and click, it magically selects a shape with contiguous pixels of the same color. However, if you uncheck “Contiguous,” the “Magic Wand” will select every pixel of that color, whether touching or not.
  6. Sample All Layer: If your file has more than one layer, it’ll consider all layers (while turned on) while making selection.
  7. Refine Edge: Here you can find the complete answer.

And that’s all for today. See you in the next week.

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